


Up Past the Nursery

by mercyme



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mr. & Mrs. Smith Fusion, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercyme/pseuds/mercyme
Summary: Victor's an assassin and Yuuri is an Interpol agent. The natural progression is that they get married and eventually find out. AKA The Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU no one asked for.





	Up Past the Nursery

**Author's Note:**

> There is occasional violence depicted in this fic typical of what you'd expect from a spy story. Consider this a trigger warning for blood, injuries, casual reference to murder, and poorly written fight scenes.
> 
> I've finished writing this and will post the rest after some necessary editing. I may end up editing this chapter some more, as well. Thanks for your patience!

The stab wound is jagged but fairly superficial, slanting over his hip bone like an accent mark. He stares at it in the mirror, breath coming heavy and wet from the back of his throat.

Life as an assassin is mundane at times. Other times he is bleeding out of an abdominal stab wound and dry heaving over a hotel room sink. Sometimes it's paperwork and sometimes he's hoping for a miracle as he peels his blood-soaked shirt from his skin.

It's the way his life's been going lately.

"Hey Yakov. It’s done,” Victor balances the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he sutures the stab wound with his tailor kit. The needle bobs in and out of his skin, dragging dark purple thread behind it. This is not an ideal situation but it won't alter Victor's life views or anything.

He keeps his debriefing short.

“I'll be back tomorrow. Try not to kill anyone," his voice is light as he wraps gauze around his waist once, twice-around and around until there is barely enough gauze left to tuck back into itself, "That is, uh. Well, you know what I mean. Expect me back tomorrow."

Victor doesn't mention getting stabbed. He ends the call and hobbles downstairs in search of a cure for what ails. The bar that he settles on has two clear goals that align well with his needs; it's an establishment that provides cheap liquor and four walls to drink it in. 

"Un Kalimotxo, por favor," Victor's propped himself up against a barstool, sweating in what he assumes is a vaguely unappealing sort of way. His eyes are directed unseeingly at the Barcelona vs. Atletico Madrid football game playing on a flatscreen television above the bar. He feels stiff and disillusioned with Banco Santador and Spain's banking system at large. It’s been a hellish 52 hour crash course in high profile corporate espionage. This was his thirteenth international target and-god willing-his last for the near, unknowable future.

Next to him sits a man with messy, dark hair and rolled up sleeves. Victor's attention vacillates between the players in their technicolor uniforms on the tv and this man's glasses. His glasses are sitting crookedly on his nose. Victor thinks it's silly that the man does not straighten them. In the world outside of Victor's personal espionage hell (i.e., “The Real World”), he isn't a huge fan of semi-rimless glasses. Especially not blue ones. But the man wearing these ones has high cheekbones and kind, tired eyes. He can pull them off.

Victor recalls priests, librarians; the hidden fantasies of the dark and the depraved such as himself. Victor gives up on the game and levels his full attention on the man as he waits for his drink.

"Hola, ¿que tal?"

The man sets down his drink and turns his head without any customary show of peevishness. He smiles and responds in Russian, “Hey yourself.”

This is where it begins for Victor.

“Is it so obvious that I’m not a local?” Victor responds.

"Your pronunciation's fine." the man’s voice is modulated-it is clear that the Russian language is difficult for him, but his eyes sparkle a little,"I, uh, just have an ear for accents…Plus, you kind of look like a tourist."

It shocks a laugh out of Victor; his "embarrassing" (thanks, Yuri), bark-like one. A woman shifts in her seat further down the bar, leaning closer to the flat screen broadcasting the game.

Victor's mind has tripped over its own feet. A wide empty room with nothing to say.

" _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ ,” Victor thinks.

“Well aren’t you funny?” he says instead. He's going to blame the blood loss.

The man's expression dissolves into something more placid. He moves to swirl his drink around, either nervous or losing interest.

“No, I’m Yuuri."

“Ah, it’s nice to meet you, Yuuri," Victor grins up through his lashes, eyes crinkling. It's two steps past coquettish and far more desperate than he'd care to admit.

"Listen," Yuuri says, "I'm sure it's a pleasure." His eyes run over Victor without judgment, only a frank consideration. "And I'm sure that you’re a lovely person, but I've got some money riding on the game. Or, more accurately, a lot of money. "

"Okay, that's fair." 

Victor killed a man today. He hurled him through the window of his own investment firm, limp body duct taped to a desk chair. Was it Corinthian leather? Does it matter? Victor does the noble thing, the "right" thing and lets the conversation die. It feels like an accomplishment. Maybe he's lost his grasp on human decency, afterall. He is wearing yesterday's clothes and blood could very well be seeping through them. His hair is disheveled. It's apparent that he hasn't been home in a while. Sure, he knows that he's been out working, trying to make a difference and earn the respect of his peers like any other blue collar layperson in this day and age. But to the passerby, it's feasible that he's another of the many horny tourists flooding in and out of the city. Another set of grimy hands. A whiskey wide smile.

"Well, as long as it's fair,” Yuuri responds blandly and returns his attention to the game.

The remainder of the game passes in an admittedly uncomfortable silence. Then it's over. Atletico Madrid wins, 1-0. Nice try, hail the underdog, don't pass go, etc.

He pays his tab and edges through the door, his makeshift stitches unyielding in his abdomen. Victor's got a lot of work to do tonight, anyway. His laptop is waiting for him at the hotel. It's on standby beside the notepad housing his nearly illegible intel. On the counter rests a 1,85€ bottle of wine and a tv that, so far as Victor can tell, plays nothing but static. What a travesty, though, what a spiritual agony it would cause to waste his not-vacation agonizing over the shitty wifi.

He thinks about the shoreline and how the buildings run right to to the sand. How nice it would be to see them in person, at night, right now. With a man in an electric blue windbreaker.

Victor makes the best decision of his life and swings around, back to the bar. Yuuri shakes his head mock-forlornly when Victor lowers himself woodenly onto the stool next to him.

"So you're a betting man?"

Yuuri is quiet, courses of actions running up against their results and dissipating in his mind. "Yes," he says finally, "When it's worth the risk."

"Well, I bet you won that money you were talking about earlier," says Victor, dragging his finger along the bar-top. It’s sticky so he stops.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. And I bet that I know someone who could help you celebrate."

"Is that so?"

"It _is_ so. In fact, I bet that-in this case-the celebration might even surpass the win. I bet I could even prove it to you, if you took me up on it."

"And what if it's not? What it you're bluffing?” Yuuri hides his blush behind his drink and finishes it. It clunks on the bar when he sets it down.

"Some bets are worth the risk, right?"

A thousand doors move to shut in Victor's mind.

The man extends a hand, "Then let's shake on it. You still haven't told me your name, by the way."

The doors clatter back on their hinges.

“Oh, it’s Ruslan,” Victor says and his cheeks hurt with how much he is smiling.

And that is how it began for Yuuri.

\--//

The marriage is kept hush-hush; very quiet in the ways that Victor is not. Victor can't stop being an assassin because he has a fiancé now.

"My parents can't come," he says, not for the reasons that Yuuri will assume.

"You do know that that's part of what eloping means?" Yuuri's voice comes out muffled-his face is pressed firmly into a hotel room pillow. 

"No, eloping just means that it has to be done in Vegas or we're automatically disqualified.” 

They've been dating for three years and Victor has kept him like a secret, entirely blind to (protected from) his working life. Yuuri does not have the barest glimpse of Victor's career but simultaneously possesses the clearest and most complete knowledge of who Victor is as a person. To Victor, it is like knowing the voice, face, and daily machinations of a neighbor but never learning their name. It does not make it right but he recognizes that love is not always ethical. Yuuri's hair is splayed across the stark white pillow. When it is down, his hair is almost long enough to curl behind his ears. Right now it fans over him like a crown. Victor wishes he could reach into the back of his mind and draw out how to braid it. Instead, he twists a lock between his fingers.

"You're being ridiculous," Yuuri says but he lacks conviction,"What's going on?"

Last night, after slinking out of the bed at three am, his target had caught Victor on his knees, jimmying his toolkit into the door's lock. What resulted had been a flurry of slamming doors and footsteps echoing down narrow staircases; shadows lit by dim motion sensors. For the first time in months, Victor had had to use a gun, and his first thought after the recoil was Yuuri. Thoughtful Yuuri, hand running back through his hair or wrapped around a green felt-tip pen, checking numbers for his accounting firm. Passive Yuuri, resident of a world inhabited by civilians and soccer moms that Victor can navigate only as a trespasser.

Victor stumbled into a gas station on the way back to their hotel to scrub the blood from his forearms. He'd checked twice to be sure that he didn't have any hard to explain bruises. The answer to that question is Yuuri. What's going on is Yuuri. This entire course of action is selfish.

"I'm not being ridiculous," he tugs gently on Yuri's hair,"I'm being Ruslan."

He's gotten soft.

"Do you want to have a real wedding?"

He's gotten softer than he was, at least.

"Eloping is-"

"What I suggested originally," Yuuri overrides him as he sits up. The sheets pool around his hips. Victor is reminded needlessly of why he loves afternoon sex. The hotel room windows are sprung wide open and the sun is beaming in, carried on a soft breeze. The midday sunlight is especially kind to Yuuri, whose features appear impossibly soft in it. Victor is rendered helpless. He throws an arm across his face.

"Listen," (listen, listen, listen, Victor loves that too-"listen-"),"I thought it would make things easier. If you want-"

Victor groans, peeking out from under his arm, "No, no. It's too late. I bought the tickets this morning."

Yuuri reaches for his glasses on the side table, sliding them onto his nose. He regards Victor suspiciously, ”What tickets?"

"To Vegas."

"You're serious."

"No, I'm-"

"Ruslan, I swear," Yuuri cuts him off, a warning yawning in his words. He's getting out of bed. Victor openly gazes at his ass as he shimmies into last night's jeans and tugs a still partially buttoned button-down over his head. He grabs his phone from the side table and toes on some running shoes.  "I need to make a phone call. I'll be back in a minute."

He's not back in a minute. Or three. Victor, not particularly worried, is on the phone with room service when Yuuri does eventually walk back into the room, shutting the door behind him softly.

"Long time no see."

Yuuri sighs. Victor orders paninis.

"You're lucky I love you," is what Yuuri says in place of any tangible answer. Victor accepts it gallantly, nodding amicably from the bed, as though this is a topic he has thought long and hard on. He twirls the phone cord around his finger and he's 17 again, dreaming of bigger things, a brighter tomorrow. Life is so much better now.

The flight leaves at 1600 and by the next week, they're married. In the end, it was the small affair they originally intended. They sealed it with a kiss; the world reduced to two wet mouths on a hot, dry Nevada morning. The universe didn't re-align, but it was the start of a good eternity, Yuuri had mused. Victor had indulged him, fully aware that an eternity wasn't what either of them had knowingly or unknowingly signed up for.

\--/

The marriage counselor is leveling her gaze on Victor. It's stern but Victor hides his discomfort behind an easy smile. He doesn't feel as though psychiatrists should outwardly pass judgement. Not before the end of their first session, at least. 

The session had already begun by the time Victor had bustled in ten minutes late. Yuuri had been mid-sentence when Victor brushed a kiss against his temple and sank into the plush seat beside him. The sentence died on his lips.

Yuuri had rolled his eyes heavenward. Lord, give him strength. Lord, grant him the serenity.

The psychiatrist smiles,"Thank you for joining us, Ruslan."

"Yeah, sorry I'm late. Work kept me."

Beside him, Yuuri tenses. Victor pretends that he doesn't notice; pretends that he doesn't do things like notice for a living.

"And what do you do for work?"

"Yuuri hates it when I talk shop, but I'm in law. Corporate."

The rest of the session passes in much the same way. Nothing of any depth. A few hard-hitting questions interspersed so that Victor knows she's listening, reading a network of invisible subtitles running below every response they offer.

Nearing the 45 minute mark, Yuuri’s gaze is fixed on his hands, hanging loosely between his thighs. He keeps his eyes locked there as he says, "It just feels like there's this...distance between us. And everyday we are filling it with the things we don't say to each other. The secrets we keep ."

He looks tired. His shoulders sag. They’ve only been married for two years, it seems too soon for him to be carrying this weight. Victor wonders idly if he's killing him; if the love that Victor harbors for him is a toxic thing. This is not the first time this thought has confronted him.

"Do you have any secrets, Yuuri?” The psychiatrist has her ankles crossed demurely beneath her seat. Her notepad is laid flat against her lap and her hair is slicked back into a sleek, black ponytail. She's an image of clean lines. She has no soft edges.

Yuuri glances at Victor. Tired, open, "No, no. Of course I don't."

The psychiatrist jots something down on her notepad. The scrape of her pen against the paper is a harsh reprimand. Some ugly part of Victor is vindicated. A larger part is mad. Victor hates the thought of this virtual stranger unearthing a flaw in Yuuri, seeing something to fix.

"And you, Ruslan?"

He takes his retaliation as he usually does: with a broad, open grin and a hint of guilt. He can't look at Yuuri when he speaks, so he stares directly at her when he says,”No. None worth keeping, anyway."

After dinner at the new Thai place on the corner that Victor has been wanting to try, Yuuri tugs on the rope around Victor’s wrists once more for good measure, then moves away from the bed. The restraints are tighter than they usually are. Victor extends his fingers and rolls his shoulders, making a show of testing their tenacity. They hold firm.

It must've been a rough day at the office, he thinks. Drama between the departments or numbers failing to add up. Or that new accountant, Minako-maybe she's less charming than their conversation at the last dinner party had caused Victor to believe. Victor is fond of the life Yuuri leads. He takes comfort in the banality of it; that it is separate and clean from the blood on Victor’s hands. A rush of love swells over Victor. He rolls his bare hips up and off of the bed, smirking.

Yuuri doesn't smile back. His eyes are cold and he's picking Victor apart in their mood lighting (Victor’s big on atmosphere lighting). Victor reevaluates the bags under his eyes, the sheen of spit on his full, bottom lip where he's been worrying it. Maybe it's more than the office.

Maybe it's the marriage counseling.

Yuuri lowers himself to the edge of the bed and adjusts his glasses. He leans over Victor, the buttons on his shirt inches from Victor’s bare chest.

"Tell me, Ruslan," Yuuri says and the latent threat in his command clicks crisply at the back of his throat, "how many people have you killed?"

Their matching watches tick on their bedside table. A car drives down their suburban street.

"What? What are you talking about? Killed?"

Victor could write a novel about how quickly Yuuri’s face shutters closed-how smoothly he retreats from the bed. The softened light from their bedside lamps pool at his shoulders and casts his face in shadow. Were he an author, this would be Victor's magnum opus. Yuuri, the hierophant, the tower, the bringer of death. The ender of the ethereal "life as he knows it". Ah, the implications of a life turned 180 degrees. Of two years of autumnal bliss collapsing into winter.

"Don't you dare insult me," Yuuri's voice is trying for detached but it cracks midway through.

"I don't know," Victor replies then. He has to look away, at the framed photograph of the two of them at an ice rink at the bedside table. It's from their one year anniversary. His heart aches.

"You don't know.”

If it was ever going to happen, it wasn't supposed to happen like this.

"I don't keep track, Yuuri," he says and it's a damnation. His pulse is rocketing, his hands feel too faint to jerk against their restraints.

"He doesn't keep track." Yuuri murmurs to the wall,"My husband doesn't know how many people he's killed because he doesn't keep track."

Then he stands. It should be storming or tumultuous or emphatic but it's a dismissal, instead. He sighs like he has countless nights before; dropping his jacket from his shoulders after getting home late; discussing world affairs; bowing out of group dinners early to catch up on his work. He sighs like he's perusing the past few years of his life and finding nothing noteworthy.

Victor throws his body into freeing himself, yanking his arms hard enough to feel the bones in his shoulders attempting to rock out of place. Yuuri watches him, deliberating. He's deep in thought while Victor thrashes naked against his restraints.

"I'm going to take the car now, and I am going to go for a drive. Don't be here when I get back."

"Yuuri!" Victor yells, "Yuuri?" Yuuri’s shoes sound down the hallway.  "Yuuri!"

The door leading to the garage opens and shuts with more force than strictly necessary. He listens for the car backing out of the driveway and hears it peel out onto the street.

Rocks clattering, tires screeching.

"Well," Victor says to the ceiling, "That could have gone worse."

He panics.

When he breaks free from his ties, it's around midnight. The metro doesn't run this late on a weeknight, so he catches a night bus to HQ. Once his bus rolls to a stop near his innocuous law-building-turned-home-base, it's nearing the wrong side of one in the morning.

Christophe is behind the receptionists desk. Usually he's not, preferring to read into the responsibilities of an consultant as loosely as possible and rarely showing up at all. Victor figures this is a "corrective assignment", perhaps for whatever job it is that Christophe’s recently botched, though it doesn't seem to be working. Christophe’s juggling the stapler and an empty bottle of wine. He promptly drops both when Victor bursts through the doors (“bursts” being something of an exaggeration-revolving doors save energy but don't do much in the way of drama).

"Vicchan! Victor!'Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.'" Victor keeps his pace, his steps long and fast as he spans the gratuitous distance between the doors and the front desk, "Victor, when'd our dear Yakov send you out? Don't tell me it was another Costa Rica situation. I haven't eaten Twizzler's since, I swear-"

"No mission, Chris," he says, “but could you do me a favor?"

Christophe makes a show of checking his wrist for a watch that isn't there, glances pointedly down at the two bottles of wine empty and cracked by his roller chair. He shrugs, eyeing him blearily, "If you trust me to."

"Can you look up someone for me?"

A nod. His fingers are ready at the keyboard.

"Yasuda. Yuuri Yasuda. Five foot eight. Born November 29”-Christophe’s fingers don't move-"It's Y-U-U-R-I.”

Victor looks from Christophe’s cracked knuckles (oh, how Egan Schiele would love Chris’ fight-hardened hands) to his disbelieving expression. It's an expression he saves for their special "it's a good thing you're hot" arguments.

Victor stares balefully up at the ceiling, high and bracketed by a wide, winding staircase, "Chris, I'm just-I've got a lot going on. Could really use some help here."

Christophe pretends to type for a minute, fingers ghosting over the keys, "Nope. No results for Yuuri Yasuda. AKA, known alias of Interpol agent Yuuri Katsuki. I mean, really? Do you seriously not pay attention to the briefings?”

The phone rings. Christophe and Victor watch it together for a moment, bonding over the shock. He answers after the fifth ring.

"Yakov!" Christophe calls into the receiver, sounding as cheery as he's ever been in a conversation with their boss. He spins in his chair so that the phone cord nearly strangles him and his back is to Victor, "Mhm-see, I KNOW I was supposed to call you when he came, but-," he sends a quick, cursory glance over his shoulder at Victor, ”Minor rope burn on both wrists, that's it…Well, I'm not going to give him a physical here in my lobby, now am I?…No….No idea where the wine…Of course not…Yes sir, I will tell him."

He hangs up the phone and swings back around in his chair, bringing out a half empty bottle of wine from beneath his desk. He offers the bottle to Victor. It sloshes dark and dangerous beneath the fluorescent light of the lobby and smells like Shiraz. Victor is having difficulty focusing. He shakes his head "no".

"So! Good news and bad news.”Christophe says loudly, taking a swig from the bottle,"Good news: Yakov is giving you some vacation time. Bad news: it's mandatory vacation time.”

“I’m suspended? On what grounds?"

"On the grounds that this is a seedy espionage organization that we all decided to join knowing that it was nothing close to a democracy."

"What the fuck?” Victor shouts, certain that Yakov’s feed picks it up in his office. He wants to do more. He is a man so often centered around his heart but right now his heart is cold and hard.

"Okay. “ Victor says then, struggling to make sense of the conversation, "...since when has that been one of Agent Katsuki’s aliases?"

"Am I drunker than I thought? Are you drunk?” Christophe scrubs a hand over his face, “Katsuki is big on the anonymity thing but even the interns know the aliases of the people hunting us down. No one can force you, okay, but you should go under, Nikiforov. Find an open safe house and get some sleep. This will blow over"

Victor drops his hands, takes a steadying breath. He's right. He's got things to do. A husband to...to what? Find? He doesn’t even know who his husband _is_.

Christophe blearily yanks the phone cord from the outlet. Victor realizes he's been dumb. Christophe hands him the wine and he drinks deeply.

"Yuuri is Agent Katsuki?" He asks again. That's not a common name, not by a long stretch. For a prestigious vigilante organization, their staff is proving extraordinarily incompetent tonight.

The entryway stretches wide and empty around Victor.

"It can't be that bad," Christophe resigns himself to a night of playing functional alcoholic. He continues, voice reasonable, “Yakov tells me that there was a leak but this surely isn't the first time. Did he track you down or something?”

Victor gasps like he's been injected with an adrenaline pen, “Oh my god.” He needs to lie down, needs to get drunk, needs a cigarette, though Victor’s never been a smoker.

"-But I mean, no name recollection at all?" Christophe shakes his head to himself, "It's not like Yuuri Yasuda is a popular name, especially out here. I only know of the one, at least.” Christophe tilts his chin toward Victor’s wrists, “Did he give you those? What’s he look like? Half robot or what?"

"I didn't-"

Christophe makes a sweeping motion with his hand, "Hey, no worries. The guy’s got a lot of aliases. So he caught you this time. You got away and it won’t happen again. Just lay low for a while. Go to Moscow or some shit. Lyon. Budapest. I'm telling you, it'll blow over."

God, how reckless has he been?

Christophe is still talking, "By the way, you forgot to take your ring off from your last mission."

"Yeah." He slides his ring from his hand into his pocket, realizing he's still wearing it on his finger, "it's not-I’ve gotta go. Yakov is right. I need a break. A long break. Uh, do me a favor?"

Christophe smirks, "You want me to join when you go into hiding?"

"I said a favor, Christophe," Victor says, the pale echo of a smile playing at his lips.

“I’ve heard that one before."

"Delete my file. Please."

Christophe is staring up at him. Disbelieving. Again. "These 'favors' of yours? They suck. You're gonna get me fired."

"I'll find a way to fire you if you don't." No, he wouldn't.

"No, you wouldn't. You love my taste in music too much." It's true. Tonal Tuesdays and Jazz flute Fridays bring something extra to the office. It almost makes coming in for paperwork worth it. Christophe finishes his wine and eyes Victor critically, "But I'll do it. I’ll try to do it. I’ll call Mila and find out how to do it. Same difference."

"Do it so that Interpol can't trace me?"

Christophe salutes, "Probably not. Katsuki’s pretty smart."

Victor salutes him in return and swivels on his heel. He jogs out of the building, tugging his cellphone from his back pocket for a rideshare. He needs to find Yuri.

\--//

It's edging toward two in the morning, which might explain why Otabek looks so unamused to see Victor on Yuri’s doorstep. That, and their methods clash on a fundamental level.

Otabek steps cleanly outside of the apartment and closes the door behind him. It clicks shut without any promise of a welcome.

"What do you want?" Otabek asks, not unkindly. It never is with him, just straightforward.

"How's Yuri?" Victor asks, and he smiles (it's shaky), "Is he home?"

"You're not dragging him into this." Otabek says, like it's fact, like they both don't both know that they're all already involved. Victor feels hysterical. Otabek pulls out his cigarettes and a match, flicking the match off of his front teeth to light it. He holds the flame to the end of his cigarette and shakes it out as soon as it catches. The faint amber glow of his cigarette illuminates his stoic features.

"Into what?"

Otabek releases the smoke from his lungs in a long line, eyeing Victor critically, "What do you need?"

The door opens behind Otabek and Otabek is cloaked fully in shadow. Yuri is standing in the light, eyes moving from Otabek to Victor before rolling his eyes.

"I thought I heard voices," he widens the door, "Come in, both of you, before someone calls in a domestic dispute."

Victor has always loved Yuri’s apartment. The earthy gray walls are bare save for a single framed picture of a tiger hung above the fireplace. The floors are an unforgiving white and the windows are generous, placed high in the walls. It's welcoming in the way that only an arms dealer’s home could be.

Yuri leads them into the kitchen, maybe out of habit, maybe to keep his hands busy. For as long as Victor has known Yuri, idleness has never suited him.

"I almost didn't recognize you without your hair tied back,” Victor says mildly, “It looks good down.”

"So," Yuri says curtly, ignoring him as he places three glass cups on the countertop. They click satisfyingly, “why are you here?"

Otabek moves around Yuri and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. He seems to realize how damning this is last minute and pours the water into the glasses graciously, eyes trained on the bottle, the lid, and his hands as he pours.

"It's about Yuuri Katsuki." Victor starts, sipping his water. He waits for the right moment, watching Yuri’s eyebrows raise minimally. When he raises his glass to his mouth, Victor continues, "it turns out we're married."

Yuri coughs into his water and Otabek intercepts Yuri’s glass before it collides with the floor, frowning at Victor as though he's the only man in the world who's ever wanted to see a real life spit take.

"You're serious?"

"I wish I wasn't," Victor replies, knowing full well that he doesn't mean it. The water is doing nothing for Victor. He needs Yakov and Lilia, people of hard liquor. There's a reason why he's here, though. "The problem is-okay, one of the problems is-I didn't find out until after he did. I've no clue how long he's known."

Water almost boils over a pot on the stovetop. His coworkers have found time for pasta between homicide and undercover operations. Victor finds this endearing.

"Not long," Otabek sighs and his breath takes shape in the smoke curling thickly between the three of them."Your face came up on the system this morning. It wasn’t a leak-someone put a hit on you. Interpol must have seen it, too. Anyway, your cover's blown."

The neighbor's television is playing something loud. The Mummy, maybe.

"What?" Yuri and Victor’s combined voices push at the peace in the room.

Otabek shrugs, taking an abrupt, near anxious drag.

"Yeah, we had Anya outside your house running surveillance all day. Thought it was kinda weird that no one moved in Katsuki’s office, but I guess now we know why. He must've seen it first."

"He tied me to our bed," Victor hisses and he's confronted with two faces verging on morbid curiosity and blatant disinterest, "because he was pissed."

"Understandable," Yuri says,"you kill people for a living." He strains their noodles through a colander.

"Oh, like I'm some homicidal maniac. I'm doing this for the betterment of mankind, you know."

"Cool motive," Otabek says, stubbing out his cigarette, "Still murder."

"No, there were a few times when he didn’t murder," Yuri interjects," Monaco, Mendoza, Oslo, that third time in the Philippines. Bruges, when he covered for Christophe."

"Oh, and Costa Rica."

"Costa Rica…With the Twizzlers? Brutal." Yuri winces. "Let's hope Katsuki doesn't hear about Costa Rica."

The door bell rings and Otabek and Yuri share a loaded glance before Yuri moves to open it. Otabek opens a drawer and pulls out a gun. Victor would feign surprise but there's very little motivation in him to feel anything anymore.

He hears Yuri open the door, Otabek’s hurried, "Shit." And then the window above the sink shatters and the Interpol agent formerly known as Yuuri Yasuda is jumping in, steel toed boots landing loud on the tile.

"Are you gonna make this hard?"  He asks, which is rather anti-climatic after that entrance. Victor should have anticipated this from a public employee. Yuuri drops a few bills on Yuri’s counter, presumably to cover the damage. Victor hates him, but he really doesn’t.

"Yes. No. Fuck, I don't know." He doesn't move for the gun at his side. He doesn't lunge for a knife, a cleaver-for fuck's sake, it's a kitchen, even the scissors would do. His hands are at his sides and he is useless. Yuuri looks almost disappointed.

He takes a step toward Victor. A dangerous mix of adrenaline and instinct kicks in. Victor has his gun pointed at Yuuri’s forehead, "Wait." He brings the gun against the side of his own head and taps it against his temple,"Probably not."

The Mummy is still playing somewhere in the apartment building. Upstairs, maybe. Victor becomes aware of Yuri and Otabek in the doorway.

“Victor Nikiforov," Yuuri says slowly, and his name-his _real_ name-sounds wrong there, "Where is your wedding ring?"

"Shit," Victor says.

Then Yuuri pistol whips him.

"Not in my house!" Yuri is shouting, "not in my house!" 

Victor scrambles up off of Yuri’s cool, granite countertop. He deflects a blow from Yuuri, their forearms colliding with a flare of pain. Victor sweeps out his leg and kicks Yuuri’s feet from underneath him.

"We don't have to do this!" He shouts, hands in front of him, fingers spread. A dangerous animal analogy would be apt here, but Yuuri doesn't appear crazed. He frowns deeper and fires a warning shot above Victor’s shoulder from his spot on the floor, rolling into a squat.

"That can't be protocol!" Victor shouts disbelievingly and books it, running in a frenzied, hazardous way. He surges toward the door without form or any sense of balance, banking hard around the corner of Yuri’s hallway.

"You're making a mistake!" Victor calls over his shoulder, but he doesn't fully believe it himself and can't trust either one of them to stop. Yuuri puts another bullet in Yuri's wall. Victor isn't sure if Yuuri is following him, but he keeps sprinting until he's slumped inside a taxi, hands sweaty and shaky as he grasps for a plan.

Because he has to tell the driver something, he gives her his home address. The meter starts and they take all of the familiar roads, hit the same turns. Victor could fool his mind-so pliable and sleep deprived-into believing that he's coming home after a normal day.

He remembers the nights that he'd been called into work and elected to ignore his phone only for Yuuri to have leave for an emergency-a mysterious illness in the family, a suicidal coworker, an error with the files at work. He remembers bruises and scrapes and lumps and bumps. He remembers only learning that Yuuri spoke Chinese, Norwegian, and French a year after they'd eloped and what a weird thing that had been to hide for so many years.

God, he'd been so stupid.

He'd been so, so stupid. And how long had Yuuri known? Since before Victor had broken his leg two years ago "slipping down the stairs"? Since they first met five years ago, in that dusky bar in Costa Blanco? Is that why they eloped? Or was it truly just today when someone in the world had decided to pay to see Victor dead?

When Victor arrives, Yuuri knocks him unconscious before he can retrieve the keys from his pocket to open the door. 

\--//

"How'd you find out?" Victor asks. It's the first thing he says when he wakes up. They're in a mid-range hotel. The blinds are drawn against the city and the television is playing The Holiday on mute. Victor loves The Holiday. 

"Aw," he says, "I love The Holiday. Did you put in on for me?"

"The man tied to the chair doesn't ask the questions," Yuuri replies, pulling out another gun (because apparently one isn't enough) and beginning to clean it. He checks the barrel then clicks it shut with a flick of his wrist.

"You look good with that gun, agent," Victor drawls, working the ropes against each other between his wrists. He is never going to get rid of the rope burn. "Real sexy."

“29 confirmed kills. 13 seriously maimed. No children. Assignment must come directly from Yakov-"

"-What is this?-"

“-highly experienced with explosives, long range weaponry, and hand to hand combat. Best with personnel. Fluent in five languages. Contact in case of death: Not available."

Victor’s skin breaks, tearing against the rope in a way that he once was familiar with but not so much in recent years. There are some things to be said for the domestic life.

"You. This is your file. "

Victor’s chair rocks a little. Maybe one of the legs is loose. That could be useful, push come to shove. "You memorized my file?"

"Outside of a few details, I didn't have to."

Victor masks the thrill that this sends through him by focusing on the wrinkles in the plastic on the floor below him. Plastic, really?

Someone in the room watches too many movies and it's not the one tied to the chair.

Yuuri’s cell rings. He raises it to his ear as he levels the barrel of the gun with Victor’s knee cap, "Excuse me."

Unsurprisingly, Yuuri is the most polite interrogator Victor’s ever had. Is this how he is with everyone? His voice quiet and soft, rewarding information with a "thank you" only to turn around and pistol whip him for not wearing his wedding ring. He must be terrifying in the field, a stereotype defying nightmare in a blue windbreaker with a felt-tipped pen perpetually stuck behind his ear.

"Katsuki here...Yakov,” he says, and then a little firmer, “Yakov. I understand that. Listen. How does one justify systemic killing in the quest to end it? Over the course of our discussions, I had difficulty embracing your mindset," Yuuri takes a steadying breath and cocks his gun, "I do not have this problem anymore. Please don't attempt to contact me. I'm going to need some time to mourn."

Yuuri drops his arm a few inches. He pulls the trigger. Victor screams. Yuuri hangs up the phone. Silence reigns supreme.

**Author's Note:**

> For those curious, the drink that Victor orders at the beginning of the fic (kalimotxo) is red wine and cola. It can also be spelled "calimocho" depending upon where you are in Spain. :--)
> 
> Fic title and chapter titles are lyrics from "Up Past the Nursery" by Suuns. 
> 
> I hope that you enjoyed!


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